Monthly Archives: March 2014

Well this year’s snubs n’ flubs season rolled around and I didn’t even realize it was Oscar night until Steve texted me instructing me to be at his house by 5:00. Like most sane people, I have a love-hate relationship with the Oscars that I would describe as 99% hate and 1% love, with a 1% margin of error. Perhaps once every tens years something delightful happens at the Oscars–an amazing off-the-rails political speech; Frances McDormand eschewing all thank yous to direct her remarks to everyone putting strong women in films; the time Silence of the Lambs swept the awards and beat Beauty and the Beast for best picture and I gloated loudly and for way too long over all the twee ding dongs at my high school who loved that classic Disney garbage pile and were shocked by all the face-ripping-offage in the former film.

Mostly, though, Oscar night is a parade of clichés and self-aggrandizing capitalist flamboyance performed by outrageously wealthy people who make millions of dollars pretending to be other people, in films that MAYBE 12% of Americans have ever even heard of. Also, the films actually up for awards are often utter drivel, which is depressing, because if we’re going to honor classy “best” films that only 12% of American snobs have seen, can’t they be the actually good films and not, like, American Hustle?

I do enjoy seeing celebs interfacing awkwardly with one another and with the human pieces of shit who make their living doing red carpet interviews. I enjoy seeing which celebs bring their moms as dates (never dads! what’s that about). I enjoy seeing a classy dress and commenting on it like I know what I’m talking about (“that’s a good cut for her”<---WTF). This Oscar night was marred ahead of time by the incredibly tone deaf Jimmy Kimmel bit where he really cruelly mocks the audience for being fat and stupid and poorly dressed and eating cheese-puffs with our hideous swollen fingers, as he simultaneously earnestly enjoins them not to make fun of Cate Blanchett's dress because these people worked really hard to make great movies and who are you to judge. I basically have never seen anything so off-point and insulting in my life. Millionaire fashion snobs shouldn't be made fun of by their own audience because said audience is fat. Thank you, Jimmy Kimmel, I continue to be completely uninterested in your career.

“The listener is not childlike, they are childish; their primitivism is not that of the undeveloped, but that of the forcibly retarded.” TW Adorno

As for the actual awards, I just heaved a huge sigh as I typed those words. Gravity, a horrible film, won a bunch of awards because it’s hard to make something look like it’s in space. The Somalian dude who co-starred with Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips did not win an award; I also found out last night that he was paid $65,000, total, for appearing in that film, even though he had equal screen time with Tom Hanks and was arguably the protagonist we cared the most about. Sarah says he’s been staying at a hotel out by the airport and his friend who is a cabbie has been driving him around LA. Basically I wish everyone in the world would die except that guy.

I guess the high point of the evening was Matthew McConaughey’s actually insane speech where he thanked God really profusely, described his father in Heaven drinking Miller Light and making jambalaya and dancing, and then declared that he is his own hero and isn’t that so awesome. He also failed to thank or even mention the man he portrayed in order to win the Oscar, who suffered and died so horribly. He also didn’t mention AIDS. I have been seriously digging McConaughey of late and this speech only increased my enjoyment of his work. It is interesting to watch an actual lunatic pretend to be a sociopath (True Detective) or a dying person (Dallas Buyers Club) or an aging stripper (Magic Mike). It goes without saying that his madness obviously infuses his performances with some sort of serious zing that you can feel through the screen. I also find it batshit that he keeps delivering his catchphrase from 20 years ago (“alright alright alright”) as though it is charming. Also, he is very handsome. I like cadaverous leathery McConaughey much more than I liked his old hunky persona. What an odd career arc that man has had. I also think he is faking his accent. Overall, I believe that had he not found an outlet in Hollywood movie making he would probably be a serial killer.

I really hate all the songs that are up for awards. It’s so depressing to look back through the “Best Song” category over the years. Freaking West Side Story was in that category! Songs from “Fame”?? “Up Where We Belong?” The freaking song from Flashdance?? The incredible Giorgio Moroder Top Gun love song? GIRL PLEASE. And now it’s just some dipshit meandering content-less bullshit from Frozen or that inane nonsense from Her where the moment it’s over you can’t remember a single thing about it. Music in movies is getting so bad. And nobody notices! Even friends of mine thought the songs in the Jason Siegel muppet movie were good but they sounded like they were written by a machine using an algorithm. I’M SORRY BUT I AM PISSED

I didn’t understand why Liza Minnelli didn’t sing “Rainbow.” What does Pink have to do with that song? No diss on Pink, who I like.

I liked Ellen’s bit about J-Law falling down, I thought it was well-delivered. I also liked her pizza bit. I liked when Brad Pitt kept throwing twenties in Pharrell’s hat. I liked when Lupita Nyong’o won and I liked how great she looked and I liked how she brought her brother as a date. I liked how Jonah Hill and his mom look absolutely identical. I would french Bradley Cooper’s face off. I am sick of Christian Bale and his whole deal. I am glad Martin Scorsese lost again, hooray! I would rather eat a cockroach than watch that movie.

Well there you have it

And American culture continues its slow decline

“The T-shirt is the ‘lowest form of self-expression.’” He can’t quite remember where he read it, but that idea sticks in Eric Mast’s mind as one of the interests behind Dreem Street. A loose series of limited edition tees, each Dreem Street design carries an illustration that has been hand drawn onto screens with drawing fluid and screen filler, and printed either in Mast’s basement workshop or at his co-conspirator Matthew Chambers’ headquarters in L.A. (Mast notes that L.A.’s climate has the advantage; things dry much faster there.)

Though Dreem has been around since 2010, it’s largely absent of the pressures of business, hewing closer to its identity as an art project, in part because Mast and Chambers—longtime friends who share a background in DIY punk and skateboard culture—are in constant motion with other, simultaneous projects. Mast, who also performs and DJs as E*Rock, has long been an established presence in visual art and music, designing poster art and animation as well as performing his own music and founding the Audio Dregs label in 1996. Chambers, meanwhile, works full-time as a painter, and the dichotomy between his big canvases selling for thousands of dollars while a Dreem Street tee will run you all of 20 bucks folds right into their amusement with thumbing around at the weak junctions between art, commerce, and lifestyle.

Part of the appeal of the Dreem system is the fact that Mast and Chambers can use it as a stomping ground for experimentation, punching out a few renditions of one idea before moving on to the next without having committed a significant portion of resources—a typical design only ever makes it onto eight to 15 T-shirts. “It’s a way to process ideas and make things that will end up in your friends’ houses,” says Mast—unlike, say, most of those pricier gallery canvases. Production is driven purely by competition between the two of them. Mast handles the web/commerce end, and will periodically receive boxes of new work in the mail from Chambers, thereby inspiring him to pick up his own pace and maintain what’s roughly a 50/50 ratio of output.

Designs range from painterly to a tighter, busier graphic aesthetic, but all are littered with cultural reference—Jackie Chan, The Anarchist Cookbook, Fred Astaire, Freud, Apple, and the Marx Brothers have all made appearances, alongside reflexology, Oktoberfest, I-Ching, ant farms, holiday wreaths, and a map of Italy emblazoned with the word “pizza.” Fake fan shirts are another specialty, including tributes to obscure cultural touchstones, Maison Martin Margiela, and Seinfeld.

One design that seems to be taking hold is the “Bands” T-shirt. It began with Mast wanting to make a back patch for a denim jacket, which led him to thinking of what a big deal it used to be to have the crustiest punk band represented across your shoulders—and what does that kind of music do at this point for the kids who’ve newly adopted it? What does youth culture even look like anymore? As part statement and part question, he wound up with what he calls a “band tee for the YouTube generation,” a collage of band logos chosen for visual recognition more so than Mast’s own musical preferences, with Suicidal Tendencies sharing space with Outkast, Aerosmith, and Slayer. A collaborative design with Yung Zine was also conceived in response, repeating a backwards Nike swoosh over names: Morrissey, Blondie, Aphex Twin, Mazzy Star.

Lest we get too caught up in cultural commentary, though, Dreem also does not remove itself from the expectation that these are pieces to be worn, and as such have tested the shirts to find the best for both lending themselves to the process and delivering the right fit. American Apparel was abandoned when the company dropped their preferred cut, with Kenya-produced Canvas shirts currently taking up the duty by virtue of their “neutral, not super stylized” look, though the ultimate goal is to create a pattern and produce their own.

The tees sometimes make appearances at shops like Rad Summer, but most people are left to discover Dreem Street by following crumb trails on the internet or word of mouth; there hasn’t been much in the way of marketing in the usual sense. The T-shirts have had one outing displayed at a Los Angeles art event, but have never been formally introduced in Portland. This month that is rectified, with Floating World Comics hosting a Dreem Street show through the month, featuring the shirts themselves, a selection of Mast’s prints on paper (a sneak peek of which reveals a nature motif rendered in varying combinations of contrastingly inorganic neon), photographic prints by Los Angeles artist Ben Goddard, in which the shirts make cameo appearances, and the possible inclusion of a proper essay on the “Bands” shirt’s meaning. (One gets the sense Mast wants to get it off his chest once and for all after having had to explain it too many times to drunk people at bars—a process he admits can be “hard.”) Dreem Street opens Thursday, March 6 with a reception at Floating World Comics, 400 NW Couch, 6-9 pm.